Friendly artificial intelligence: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 08:31, 3 October 2023

Revision as of 15:30, 4 October 2023

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== Etymology and usage ==

[[File:Eliezer Yudkowsky, Stanford 2006 (square crop).jpg|thumb|[[Eliezer Yudkowsky]], AI researcher and creator of the term]]

The term was coined by [[Eliezer Yudkowsky]],<ref>{{cite book|last1=Tegmark|first1=Max|title=Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality|date=2014|isbn=9780307744258|edition=First|chapter=Life, Our Universe and Everything|quote=Its owner may cede control to what Eliezer Yudkowsky terms a "Friendly AI,"...|title-link=Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing }}</ref> who is best known for popularizing the idea,<ref name="aima">{{cite book |last1=Russell |first1=Stuart |author1-link=Stuart J. Russell |last2=Norvig |first2=Peter |author2-link=Peter Norvig |date=2009 |title=Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach |publisher=Prentice Hall |isbn=978-0-13-604259-4|title-link=Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Leighton |first=Jonathan |date=2011 |title=The Battle for Compassion: Ethics in an Apathetic Universe |publisher=Algora |isbn=978-0-87586-870-7}}</ref> to discuss [[superintelligence|superintelligent]] artificial agents that reliably implement human values. [[Stuart J. Russell]] and [[Peter Norvig]]'s leading [[artificial intelligence]] textbook, ''[[Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach]]'', describes the idea:<ref name="aima" />

<blockquote>Yudkowsky (2008) goes into more detail about how to design a '''Friendly AI'''. He asserts that friendliness (a desire not to harm humans) should be designed in from the start, but that the designers should recognize both that their own designs may be flawed, and that the robot will learn and evolve over time. Thus the challenge is one of mechanism design&mdash;to define a mechanism for evolving AI systems under a system of checks and balances, and to give the systems utility functions that will remain friendly in the face of such changes.</blockquote>

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Some critics believe that both human-level AI and superintelligence are unlikely, and that therefore friendly AI is unlikely. Writing in ''[[The Guardian]]'', Alan Winfield compares human-level artificial intelligence with faster-than-light travel in terms of difficulty, and states that while we need to be "cautious and prepared" given the stakes involved, we "don't need to be obsessing" about the risks of superintelligence.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Winfield|first1=Alan|title=Artificial intelligence will not turn into a Frankenstein's monster|url=https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/10/artificial-intelligence-will-not-become-a-frankensteins-monster-ian-winfield|access-date=17 September 2014|work=[[The Guardian]]|date=9 August 2014|archive-date=17 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140917135230/http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/10/artificial-intelligence-will-not-become-a-frankensteins-monster-ian-winfield|url-status=live}}</ref> Boyles and Joaquin, on the other hand, argue that Luke Muehlhauser and [[Nick Bostrom]]’s proposal to create friendly AIs appear to be bleak. This is because Muehlhauser and Bostrom seem to hold the idea that intelligent machines could be programmed to think counterfactually about the moral values that humans beings would have had.<ref name=think13 /> In an article in ''[[AI & Society]]'', Boyles and Joaquin maintain that such AIs would not be that friendly considering the following: the infinite amount of antecedent counterfactual conditions that would have to be programmed into a machine, the difficulty of cashing out the set of moral values—that is, those that are more ideal than the ones human beings possess at present, and the apparent disconnect between counterfactual antecedents and ideal value consequent.<ref name=boyles2019 />

Some philosophers claim that any truly "rational" agent, whether artificial or human, will naturally be benevolent; in this view, deliberate safeguards designed to produce a friendly AI could be unnecessary or even harmful.<ref>{{cite journal | last=Kornai | first=András | title=Bounding the impact of AGI | journal=Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence | publisher=Informa UK Limited | volume=26 | issue=3 | date=2014-05-15 | issn=0952-813X | doi=10.1080/0952813x.2014.895109 | pages=417–438 | s2cid=7067517 |quote=...the essence of AGIs is their reasoning facilities, and it is the very logic of their being that will compel them to behave in a moral fashion... The real nightmare scenario (is one where) humans find it advantageous to strongly couple themselves to AGIs, with no guarantees against self-deception.}}</ref> Other critics question whether it is possible for an artificial intelligence to be friendly. Adam Keiper and Ari N. Schulman, editors of the technology journal ''[[The New Atlantis (journal)|The New Atlantis]]'', say that it will be impossible to ever guarantee "friendly" behavior in AIs because problems of ethical complexity will not yield to software advances or increases in computing power. They write that the criteria upon which friendly AI theories are based work "only when one has not only great powers of prediction about the likelihood of myriad possible outcomes, but certainty and consensus on how one values the different outcomes.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-problem-with-friendly-artificial-intelligence |first1=Adam |last1=Keiper |first2=Ari N. |last2=Schulman |title=The Problem with 'Friendly' Artificial Intelligence |journal=The New Atlantis |number=32 |date=Summer 2011 |page= |pages=80–89 |access-date=2012-01-16 |archive-date=2012-01-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120115062805/http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-problem-with-friendly-artificial-intelligence |url-status=live }}</ref>

==See also==